Centennial Park

Kids do Wildlife Games program in Centennial Park in the morning.  They had great fun learning about animals and birds while running around the park and forest playing games and making nature crafts.  I was supposed to meet a friend of a friend either there or for lunch with her three children, but it was a comedy of errors meeting up with delayed emails and confusion about where everything was on both our parts.  So we’ll reschedule for Monday. 

 

Meanwhile, we wandered around, fed some geese, petted some dogs, and made our way to the main restaurant of the park.  Minimalist and chic with a cheerful park view, it was populated by a handful of tourists, and hoards of mothers and their young children.  I walked in and thought I’d stumbled into a La Leche League conference – strollers clogging the aisles, boobs and nursing babies everywhere, naked cherubs getting changed, and tots from brand new to a year or so getting fed, bottled and bounced.  I hate to admit my first reaction was bred of my uptight American upbringing where you just don’t show your bodily functions in public, and it made me a little uncomfortable.  But outside of my hasty puritan reaction, I acknowledge that this is really how things probably ought to be, and I was a little jealous I didn’t have this place to come to when I was nursing my own babies, and had this community of easy going moms to hang with.  It also made me long for a little nugget to nurse, bounce and feed again; ah, how idyllic it looks from afar!

We got a table and had a lovely lunch.  After a while I noticed something remarkable:  despite the large numbers of babies in the room, there was no crying.  In general if there are even two babies at a restaurant, it’s likely that at least one of them will be crying.  But here, in Baby Utopia, if one of them starts to fuss, they just throw a boob in their mouth, and voilà!  Silence once again.  It was not a bad system.

Giant babies have their own restrooms in Australia!

It seems to be a very child-friendly city in general.  Even in department stores in the CBD, they will have a “family room” adjacent to the women’s bathrooms, which is like a lounge with a changing table and couches and armchairs where one could nurse etc.  Contrary to New York, where if you were to visit any restaurant, bathroom or store you would assume that no one had ever heard of babies.  New York City is just not designed for them. 

In any case, afterward we headed out to the neighboring playground to eat the cupcakes we’d chosen from their bakery and play.  The playground was expertly designed – with low but fun toys placed on mulch or sand (unlike so many playgrounds in the States that look like they were designed by emergency room doctors trying to get more business).  It allowed me to overrule my helicopter instincts and follow the lead of the other moms there, who were sitting on benches on the periphery, relaxing.

Around 3:30 we took a slow walk home to the bus stop, stopping at the Equestrian Centre to pet some horses poking out of stalls.  It was a long, full day.  Everyone slept well that night, especially me.